PPS Filters: Beware of Changing Keys

The other day I thought it would be fun to arbitrarily change the keys for all the members in one of my dimensions. Actually, there was a legitimate reason but after the fact I realized there was a much better way to solve my problem that didn’t involve changing the keys.

Nevertheless, the point is this: If you have a PerformancePoint (PPS) filter linked to an attribute in a dimension, and the keys change, your filter will break.

Lets say you have a PPS dashboard containing a filter and a scorecard. The filter is linked to the Category attribute in the Product dimension. If the keys in the Product dimension change from Bikes having a key of 3 and Accessories having a key of 4 to Bikes having a key of 4 and Accessories having a key of 5, then whenever you select Bikes in the filter the scorecard will display the results for Accessories. If these were the only two members in your dimension I’m not sure what would happen if you selected Accessories but I assume the scorecard would just show empty cells. Or spontaneously combust.

To fix this all you have to do is edit the filter by clicking on Member Selection, going through the wizard, and publish/deploy your dashboard.